friday fives

The Star Wars universe is amazing, we can all agree upon that. There are so many characters, planets, ships, that our imagination can be taken beyond hyperspace and we know we could live in that world if we wanted to (oh, hell, I would love to live in the Star Wars universe). But the stories we’ve seen in the saga thus far only focus on one family and the people that touch their lives. Which is great and all, but unfortunately, we don’t get to see the background stories of other characters. Here are 5 characters that I think deserve more screen time and wouldn’t mind if they were honored with a standalone movie.

Five Characters That Deserved More Screen Time

Sabé. This woman was Padmé’s loyal bodyguard and decoy. Sounds fun, right? Uhhh, sounds dangerous. How did she get to this position at such a young age? What was the training like in order to learn all the young Queen’s mannerisms, voice inflection, how to be a bodyguard, and learn all these secret ways of asking Queen Amidala for advice when you don’t know the answer? Sabé showed great strength during the Battle of Naboo and was thrust into a position where she probably was always trained for, but didn’t expect to use in such a dire situation. Was she even able to fool Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon? She later fought in the Battle of Naboo and threw out the great line of “Viceroy! Your occupation here has ended!” Playing a pivotal role in distracting him so that Padmé could get the guns and corner Nute. I would love to know more about Sabé, her past, and what the future held for her.

Bib Fortuna. I haven’t talked about him much, and he’s clearly doesn’t have the strongest mind, but I think he was actually a pretty savvy guy. He was with Jabba for at least 30ish years (we saw him in TPM) so it shows that he knew the right things to say at the right time. Plus, he looked ugly meshed with evil. The red eyes with greasy skin and lekku just made him this character I wanted to stay far away from. According to the Legends, he actually really hated Jabba and tried several times to kill him unsuccessfully. Poor guy. To fail so, so, so many times. But you know what? Sounds like Jabba never knew or he wouldn’t have kept him on so it further proves my point that I think Bib was sly, cunning, and smarter than most.

Syfo-Dyas. AOTC is not my favorite movie, but I was extremely interested in the clone army and how it was kept under wraps for so long. The back story was explained to us slightly in The Clone Wars, so it fleshed out this mystery on who Syfo-Dyas was and how he kept the clone army hidden from others. But I’d like to see a more robust version of this story and learn more about his Jedi past and the experiences that shaped him to make the decisions he did. Why did the top Jedi not listen to him about the “growing darkness”? Was this the beginning of someone being dissatisfied with the Jedi Council, even before Ahsoka? Was there more unrest within the Jedi than we knew about and how did those seeds plant throughout the Order? Knowing the ending of the movie (Spoiler alert! He dies), could actually heighten the plot.

Shmi Skywalker. Hear me out on this one. We know a lot about Shmi already, but mostly just how she relates to Anakin’s story. I’d like to see a more female centric Star Wars story that deals with more everyday issues of life, with a sprinkling of Star Wars. This could be a very interesting look at slavery in the Star War universe, something that is clearly abhorred by those closer to the center as implied by Padmé’s shock, but still very prevalent in the outer worlds. Shmi was in slavery most of her life. And imagine her shock when she became pregnant for no apparent reason? This could be a very interesting movie/story, and if someone did it right, they could really do a good job with making it very separate from any Christ-like similarities. Shimi doesn’t need to be visited by any angel or vision, she could just all of a sudden become pregnant. Imagine the fear and confusion that lives with her for 9 months. And when she gives birth, she devotes herself to her son and sees it as something happy, but he is taken from her at such a young age. From there, she goes on to lead a happier life with Cliegg Lars. This could be a very real life, tough and gritty, female-life story that I’d love to see on the big screen, even though I doubt it’ll ever happen.

Nien Nunb. I have this this weird fascination with this character because I feel like they kind of dumped him in the story and then threw him away. I mean, he got to be first mate to Lando during the final battle in ROTJ. You have to be pretty good for that, especially as he doesn’t seem to speak a lick of Basic, but understands it. According to Legends, he was once a smuggler and befriended Lando during one of his flights. So much potential here! Smugglers are always interesting so it would be great to see his adventures and the movie would be in all subtitles! It would be a foreign action film, but Star Wars style.

All characters in a movie are there to serve a purpose, whether it be a decoy for a queen or the mother of the most important character. But sometimes I think that they should get a little more time to show their side of the story and how they got where we saw them.

Who would you pick? Do you have anyone from the movies you’d like to see more of?

Now onto my Friday Five, which is an unusual post just because I rarely talk about things I hate about Star Wars. But there are things that really upset me, and that I almost hate, and most of them actually tie into the Prequels in some way.

The Five Things That Really Upset Me About Star Wars

I’ve gone into this a lot in my grievances post, but I think the biggest inconsistency that bothers me is Leia “remembering” her mother. It’s not possible. I don’t care how strong you are in the Force (and Leia is less strong than Luke and Luke has no memory of her), and if you have past Force visions (whatever), you can’t remember her from the womb or the 10 seconds you were with each other.

No, no, no, no. There was just so much potential with a really cool storyline for Leia and Padmé that…died (pun). Maybe that’s what I mourn the most. The fact that Lucas could have done something really interesting with Leia and Padmé at the end of ROTS was a lost opportunity. My great storyline has always been that Obi-Wan tries to hide Padmé and Leia (he already gave Luke to the Owen and Beru). But Anakin knows Padmé is still alive and is searching for her, so Padmé decides to confront him and tries to save him. She entrusts Leia to the Organas on Alderaan and flies to meet Vader. Palpatine knows about this and an “accident” happens to her ship and she blows up in flames. It plays into Palpatine’s master plans and his conniving and we kind of get the same results as before…but this time Leia can actually remember her mother.

Attack of the Clones. Okay, we all know this is my least favorite Star Wars movie. But let me actually go into more detail on why…the script writing is horrible. It doesn’t matter how good of an actor you are (I think Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman are pretty darn good), if you are faced with lines like you were presented in that script, ugh, good luck. You just can’t make that work. Examples of what I am talking about:

“I’d rather dream of Padmé. Just being around her again is…intoxicating.”

“I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything’s soft… and smooth…”

“Then we’d be living a lie – one we couldn’t keep even if we wanted to. I couldn’t do that. Could you, Anakin? Could you live like that?”

It’s really brutal. Sometimes when I read the script I think it sounds like a bad soap opera. And the acting is halting and stiff, none of the characters seem to have any real chemistry. I think it definitely gets better in ROTS, but AOTC is so horrible that I’m surprised I own it sometimes. The action scenes are cool, I just can’t get past the dialogue and acting in Episode II.

Hayden Christensen replaces Sebastian Shaw as a Force Ghost the end of ROTJ. I cried when I saw this the first time and it wasn’t out of happiness. I still remember where I was because I had heard rumors about this. I kept hoping it wasn’t true, praying it wasn’t true. I had spent the whole day of a Saturday watching the trilogy as it had just been released on DVD. I was getting towards the end of ROTJ and I pulled up my legs to tuck under my chin and just stared with hope against hope that the rumors were wrong. But they weren’t wrong and Christensen materialized on the screen and I screamed. And paced. And screamed at the TV again. I have heard many reasons for the change. One of them was that Lucas wanted something to tie both the PT and the OT together. Another was that as a Jedi Force Ghost, that was how Anakin remembered himself as a Jedi, before he turned into Darth Vader. A different reason was that Anakin truly died as a Jedi when he was younger, so it makes sense to come back as a Force Ghost in the younger version. It was a bad decision and it sucks that I can’t watch a nice DVD without that stupid guy’s face popping up at the end. I’m actually one of the few people that doesn’t mind the added dance scene’s in Jabba’s palace. I’d keep that in a heartbeat if it just meant taking out Hayden Christensen’s head (yes, supposedly they just CGI’d his head on there, so it’s ¾ Shaw and ¼ Christensen).

When Vader is portrayed super muscular. I don’t know, it just doesn’t sit well with me. Yes, Vader is large. Yes, he may be muscular underneath all that machine, but his muscles are not rippling out of his suit. I’ve seen many paintings and pictures which show Vader as this unstoppable force to be reckoned with, with large, broad Gaston-like muscles. I understand a lot of it is for comic books, because that’s the style of comic books, but it’s just a little out of character. I feel like I’m making a really weak argument, but look at these pictures and try to understand where I’m coming from:

This isn’t even a painting, for crying out loud!

Darth Maul returns in TCW. Overall, I liked TCW…except for when Darth Maul came back. Darth Maul was quintessentially the coolest badass Sith to bring into the Prequels. He didn’t talk much, which lent to his mysterious background. He had a double bladed lightsaber (wtf, so cool). He held his own significantly against

Not necessary.

two highly trained Jedi. I was sad he died so soon, but it seemed to be a fitting end as it hinted at Obi-Wan’s rage and how he teetered on the brink of the dark side. And damn, he got cut clean in half. No one is coming back from that. Oh wait, but he did. Whhhhhhy? They put mechanical legs on him, which look dumb, and he talks…all the time. I really loved Maul when he didn’t talk. As I said, mysterious. His whole story line was just weird too, uninteresting, and unimportant. Technically, it leaves us on a cliffhanger too where we don’t know what is going to happen to him. Why would Sidious keep him alive? Why would he even entertain that notion? (Yes, I’ve read up on Sons of Dathomir so I know what was supposed to happen after that. Still uninteresting.)

Rants over. When you love something, you love it with your whole heart, even the bad parts. I can overlook these bad parts because I love the Saga so much, but sometimes…these little things really annoy me.

So since I haven’t resolved my Scene Its issue yet (there’s a bunch of complication with this, least of all that he wants me to now run the website but I’m not sure I have the time for it. On top of that, I’d have to add in TFA and Star Wars standalone movies and I’m not sure where I’d get those scenes or if I want to be responsible for it), I’m testing out my Friday Fives.

The 5 Coolest Things About the Death Star

The most obvious point…the Death Star is round. Like, what? That was the coolest thing ever the first time I saw it. When I think of space stations, even today, I think of flat surfaces that are floating in space…mainly because that’s what we know from Earth. I basically think of it as taking a building and lifting it up into space, except cooler of course because it would have rounded corners and made completely out of metal or something. But the Death Star was completely round. How did it manage to stay “afloat” without tipping to the side?

It has the magnitude to destroy an entire planet. Oh my goodness. I do not want that thing floating near Earth. The fact that it was even referred to as a “small moon” means that you could have seen it from Alderaan, in fact probably did. Can you imagine the chills that would have gone down your body seeing that space station slowly float into view? Oooo…I just thought of a really cool EU/Legends story. Someone sees the space station from Alderaan and escapes in a nick of time. Actually that’s not much of a story, but it would be an interesting scene within the story. The sense of foreboding you get when you see it in view, Bail Organa gives you a secret message to carry to Leia knowing he will never see her again, you narrowly escape the planet in your ship only to feel the rock of the explosion behind you. Maybe your ship even gets somewhat damaged and you have to find a way to the closest planet on leaking fuel. I’m getting distracted. Anyway, I wouldn’t necessarily describe this fact as “cool”, but at the same time, it kind of is from a storytelling perspective. I’ve been researching online if any other space station in fiction did that prior to Star Wars, and I haven’t found anything. Neither have I found anything of space stations doing that after the Death Star. It’s definitely left its mark (PUN kind of).

It’s controlled by buttons. I just noticed this when I was watching ANH this past weekend. It’s so old school, but I love it. Obviously, this movie was made in the late 70s and everything then was buttons. Nowadays, we are so used to everything being a touch screen that buttons seem antiquated. I always took the Death Star and its operations for granted, but rewatching it this weekend made me really think how it looked a little dated. But at the same time, would you want something that large controlled by a touch screen? You’ve all been there when your phone doesn’t respond to your touch. What if that happened on the Death Star? You’d probably blow yourself up. I’ll be interested to see if TFA involves buttons or touch screens.

It can be operational when not complete. I don’t know many machines that can operate even when it’s not complete. For instance, a car’s engine can be working just fine, but without the wheels attached to a car, attached to a body, which is attached to the engine…it’s not going to go very far. A laptop’s CPU and RAM can be in perfect working order, but without the keyboard and mouse, it would be pretty useless. But the Death Star II is completely capable of blasting apart ships while it sits by looking harmless. Genius, Palpatine, genius.

And further on that topic, the second Death Star brought up some really interesting points. What happened to the innocent contractors brought in to work on it? And, for Death Star II to be completed that quickly, they would have had to begun working on it way before ROTJ. Yes, you know where this is going (and if you don’t, prepare to be enlightened). This is one of the coolest scenes, in my opinion, to come from the Death Star existing:

Ever wonder if a Death Star could actually destroy a planet IRL? Read this.

So, as a first Friday Fives, how did I do? I do, truly, miss my Scene It on Friday’s, but I think there’s a time when you need to stop mourning something and turn the page. Today is the first day of spring, so maybe this is a good time to leave Scene It’s in the winter and move forward with the life of something else.

By the way – STAR WARS CELEBRATION IS NOW LESS THAN A MONTH AWAY AHHH.